Subtle
by Rae1
Summary: Duo's bored with the way all their missions go. Trowa has some...interesting ideas to make things 'different'.
1. The Entertainment Value of War

Subtle  
  
~by Rae, who owns nothing. Timeline? What timeline?  
  
Inspiration: Isis. "Gundam boys... and a slingshot". Bronze. Oatmeal and Trowa's sense of humor.  
  
*********  
  
Duo watched on his vid screen as the last bomb went off, causing the only undamaged section of the compound to go up in a blaze of fire and brimstone. He was grinning, proud of a job accomplished, and accomplished well, but something seemed to be missing.   
  
He was bored, but not in the sense that there was nothing to do, because there was always -something- to do. Bored in the sense that the redundancy of -what- they did was finally wearing down on him. Apart from a few lucky captures by Oz, most missions had a way of going the same way. Sadly, for Duo the adage "We came, we saw, we conquered" no longer held any special meaning.  
  
It was an odd bit of luck that he happened to run into Trowa shortly before his next mission. Between outfitting Heavy Arms with ammunition and repairing Deathscythe, Duo shared his thoughts on the way the missions had seemed to go for the past while. "We go in, we go boom, we shoot, they shoot, we kick ass. Same thing every time, man."  
  
Trowa, largely silent, though attentive, during the rest of Duo's spiel, chose that remark to comment on. "You're bored?" he asked. Duo wasn't sure if the censure in his voice was there or imagined, but he chose to ignore it either way.  
  
"Yeah. Aren't you? It's the same thing, time and again. Sure, it's a different place and different people, but it all ends the same. Boom, we win, game over for everyone else." He closed the panel he'd been working on and crawled to sit on the shoulder of his gundam, facing Trowa and his machine. "Don't you feel it, too?"  
  
"The entertainment value of fighting has never occured to me," Trowa answered slowly, straight-faced.  
  
Duo hesitated for a moment before deciding that Trowa was teasing him. It might have been an actual insult, but at the moment, Duo was focused on the matter at hand. "I just want to do something a little different, you know? Something that we haven't done a million times before."  
  
Trowa finished what he'd been doing in the cockpit and stepped out onto the open platform. "Different." He turned his head and looked at Duo for a few seconds, green eyes intense. Then he stepped off the platform and dropped to the ground, landing easily on his feet despite the distance.  
  
Still on Deathscythe, Duo winced and shook his head. He called down, "Between you and Heero, you make the rest of us look bad."  
  
Green eyes flicked up, and there was a definite smirk on Trowa's face when he replied. "That's not difficult to do."  
  
*********  
  
Their mission came in a few days later, and the day after that, they were both in position to attack...or so Duo thought until he made to call Trowa on his radio, and received no reply. It might have seemed usual, if it hadn't been for the fact that Trowa normally kept the comm link open.  
  
"Tro? Man, you there?" Duo asked,more confused than worried. He doubted anyone could have gotten to Trowa at all, much less so quickly and without warning. With an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach (Duo refused to think of it as concern), Duo made his way around the compound, on foot since the gundams would be used for get away and finishing the destruction they started, towards the area Trowa was supposed to be. From the plan that they, 'they' meaning Duo, had talked about, Trowa's first target was the bunker: create chaos and eliminate some of the enemy before striking the rest of the base.  
  
Duo expected two things. Either he'd find nothing, not even a trace of Trowa's passing, which would mean that the plan was supposed to be commencing. Or he'd find some trace of Trowa or a struggle, and that would signal that the plan had gone haywire. What he didn't expect to find was Trowa.  
  
"What are you doing?" Duo asked. Trowa was turning the crank on a machine. The machine was set between two trees, both of which had been strapped with some kind of-- Duo touched it-- rubber sheeting. The middle section of the rubber was being pulled back by the odd little machine, stretching it out, creating a- "Slingshot?"   
  
Trowa ignored Duo as he finished cranking the machine back. Once he was satisfied with the tautness of the rubber, he carefuly set a metal bucket in the apex. It seemed oddly balanced, but stayed. Once everything seemed arranged to Trowa's satisfaction, he turned and finally acknowledged Duo's presence. He waved a hand at a lever on the side of the machine. "Would you like the honor?"  
  
With a laugh, Duo strode forward. Trowa kept him from pulling the lever two quickly, as he lifted the lid slightly on the can, pulled a frag grenade out of his pocket. The pin was pulled out, the grenade dropped in with a light splash, and the lid replaced. Trowa stepped back. Duo pulled the lever and watched as the rubber was released, sending the bucket in a well-calculated arc towards the bunker. It crashed through the glass of a high window. There was silence.  
  
"And then it goes-" BOOM! Duo grinned and turned to Trowa, but the other pilot was gone, presumably to finish the mission. With a shake of his head and a pat to the machine, Duo ran off to join in the fun.  
  
Within three minutes, Duo had set bombs in the base's hanger, despite the soldiers running around to prevent him doing just that. He slipped out of the hanger and towards the barracks, planning to go through there to get to the main office. It was empty, as he had figured it would be. There was gray stuff splattered everywhere, and he could see shards from the paint can Trowa had sent the grenade in.  
  
He left the bunker behind and started to make his way towards the building that housed the mainframe for that base. Halfway there, he was yelled at by gray-coated soldiers. He ducked, rolled, and spun, and returned fire. His aim was better than theirs, and there were only half a dozen of them. He was back on his feet in a minute, running faster this time.   
  
Trowa had been there before him... there were bodies in the hallway. It made the trip to the control room easier and quicker. He found Trowa there, with a surprise. As the green-eyed man worked on the computer, an Oz soldier stood behind him, gun trained on Trowa's back.  
  
"Ignore him," Trowa said sharply, finishing what he was doing. Duo, who had paused in the door, frowned, wondering to whom Trowa was talking. Feeling unsure, Duo crept closer, wondering why the soldier didn't turn to look at him.  
  
He choked on laughter when he saw the reason. The guard must have been in the bunker when the grenade went off; he was covered from head to toe in the gray liquid, or at least his front was covered, including his gun and the hand that held it. Duo knocked experimentally on the man's arm, and did laugh when his knuckles met hard concrete. "Liquid concrete, Tro?"  
  
"It works." At least the poor soldier had had the intelligence to close his eyes before they were stuck open. Duo grimaced, wondering how long it would take them to break the concrete off. Trowa was done before he had too much time to think about it, though. "Let's go."  
  
Duo grinned at him. "You got anything else planned?"  
  
"Something different," Trowa said shortly, leading the way out the door. He turned right in the hallway, taking them closer to the edge of the compound and farther from the hanger. "How much time on the bombs?" he asked.  
  
"About two minutes," Duo answered after a quick glance at his watch. He followed Trowa to a supply closet and grinned when Trowa pointed at a ladder that lead up to the ceiling. On top, they found an emergency landing pad for a helicopter. Under the blades of the one that had been parked there, a blanket had been spread out. Duo stopped short. "You provided lunch?"  
  
"We have twenty-eight minutes until the bombs in the control room go off. Time enough to watch your fireworks." He sat down casually on the edge of the blanket and reached into the cockpit of the helicopter for a basket of food.  
  
Without further hesitation, Duo joined him. They had just finished setting the food out when the ground shook and the hanger exploded. Duo casually fixed his plate as he watched the flames burst towards the sky, the smoke plume reaching higher and seeming to touch the sky.  
  
They ate in companionable silence, listening to the semi-distant chaos of the base. Trowa produced soda from the basket and even a cake, though it was a small one. Duo wasn't complaining. He enjoyed the food, the company, and the show.  
  
Trowa finally stood up, signalling that their 'break' was over and the building beneath them was about to blow. Duo scrambled up after him, grinning as Trowa neatly put away the remains of their picnic. On impulse, Duo hugged him quickly. "Thanks for the date, Trowa. You really know how to treat a guy."   
  
He didn't wait for a response as he ran to the edge of the building and slid down a rather convenient water pipe to the ground. He made for his gundam, ready for the getaway part of the plan. He was in the forest around the base when the last building blew up.  
  
Deathscythe was waiting for him, and he climbed up in the cockpit, feeling happier and more satisfied with a mission than he had in a while. After powering up and making a clean getaway, he turned the vidlink on. Tro's face appeared a moment later, a side shot of his normal serious expression, though Duo thought there might have been a curve to his lips that wasn't normally there.  
  
"We go boom and splat, we go in, they shoot, we shoot, we kick their asses." Duo grinned at the camera that would show his image to Trowa. "Do you have an idea for next time?"  
  
"Maybe." Trowa answered slowly, the words spoken casually. "Something small... quiet."  
  
Duo laughed. "I'm sure. Small and quiet like a gundam kicking their asses."  
  
"Something with subtlety," Trowa murmured.  
  
"Yeah, right. Subtle like a frag grenade in a bowl of oatmeal."  
  
On the vidscreen, Trowa turned his head and looked directly at the camera, making his eyes appear to be staring straight at Duo, a small, mysterious smile on his lips. "The oatmeal would muffle the noise, don't you think?" 


	2. The Subtle Ways of Humor

subtle  
  
~by Rae, who owns nothing. Timeline? What timeline?  
  
Inspiration: Bronze and the damned oatmeal. And my own wonky imagination.  
  
*********  
  
The war continued on and as the number of casualties rose, Duo's spirits dropped. He'd had a brief respite during a mission he'd done with Trowa, but after that, things resumed their "kill, destroy, run" pattern he was really starting to hate. There were few things Duo hated, but the war was one of them.  
  
On the outside, he'd retained most of his cheerfulness, but on the inside he was starting to wish something would happen to alleviate the strain of killing soldiers and destroying buildings. The latter, admittedly, was still kind of fun, because it allowed him to experiment with types and sizes of bombs. The former, however...  
  
"Do you ever wonder if they had families?" Duo asked. His companion this time around, Heero, ignored him. Duo went on as if Heero had encouraged him in some way. "Yeah, so they have to have parents. But parents don't normally depend on their kids. I'm talking about wives and husbands and kids." His normally grinning face was pulled down in a tight frown and had been for the better part of ten minutes while he'd shared his current feelings with Heero. "I wonder sometimes how many kids I'm making orphans and how many widows and widowers we're all leaving behind."  
  
"You'll compromise the mission if you think about it," was Heero's only comment as he moved from Wing's left shoulder around to the right shoulder to fiddle with a control panel there. Sitting comfortably on Wing's head, Duo only had to shift his position slightly to continue the conversation.  
  
"What do you mean?" he asked, voice curious. Any other questions or thoughts were put on hold while he waited for the decidedly unchatty Heero to answer.  
  
"Worrying will only get you killed," Heero explained shortly, hands buried in wires and his head bowed.   
  
Duo considered that and then nodded, seeing the point in the words Heero didn't say, reading more in the tone than was probably there. He wasn't about to concede the entire point, though. Not until he got his taciturn friend to talk a little more. "How do you deal with it, Heero?" it was the last question he would pose towards the brunet and he slid down to rest on Wing's shoulder, trying to indicate in body language that if Heero answered Duo would leave him alone. "And if you say the word 'mission' once during your answer, I will never leave you alone." Okay, so being more pointed about it might work a little better. Heero wasn't one for subtlety.  
  
The pause before Heero's answer was longer that time, but Duo could be patient. At long last, the response came, and it was as simple as Duo had known it would be. "I consider the outcome of our failure and the lives lost due to the Alliance." He looked up at Duo for just a second, his blue eyes intense. "The lives we destroy are the price we pay to protect a million more."  
  
"Thanks, Heero," Duo said softly. He patted the other boy's shoulder for a second, proud of the direct answer, squeezed it, and slid down Wing's arm. There were worse things, Duo silently agreed, than being a killer. Giving up and letting the Alliance conquer the colonies was one of those things.   
  
He slipped out of the hangar on silent feet, his braid whipping behind him for a second as the wind outside snapped it back. It was almost strong enough to force him back a step, but he'd been expecting it and he bent forward and pushed against the wind as he made his way to the small hut he was sharing with Heero. It would figure their gundams would get better living conditions than they did. No sooner had that thought run through his head that he laughed, his mood lighter than it had been for a while. It helped to be able to hear the confidence Heero felt about what they were doing. To know that someone else believed in them was a comfort, especially knowing the rest of the world saw them as terrorists.  
  
*********  
  
Their mission, coming a mere day after their conversation about war, was to infiltrate a base, find the hidden control room, and blow everything up -after- they copied the files from the main computer. Duo got to play dress-up as an Oz soldier, his distinctly non-uniform haircut hidden beneath the standard cap and the back of his uniform jacket.   
  
It was five in the morning in the time zone they were in, and Duo followed the rest of the soldiers from his barracks sluggishly. Mornings were not his thing, especially after a long night of skulking around the base and searching for the control room. Heero was in another part of the base on an assignment for one of their commanding officers. So far, no one had seemed to notice anything different about the two soldiers transferred in. Their paperwork had been given a cursory glance by a General and then they'd been given an assignment and sent off.  
  
At the moment, Duo wasn't interested in wondering why it had been so easy. He was already eyeing with suspicion anyone who looked at him oddly, and he was hungry and tired on top of that. What he needed was a hot meal, a hot bath, and a good back rub. Though not necessarily in that order.  
  
The line finally grew smaller and he found himself at the food table. A large pot of-- he sniffed the air and grimaced-- oatmeal was being spooned out by an officer in a plain white apron. Duo's turn came and the long-haired pilot raised his bowl and his eyes, and nearly dropped the former as a bold green eye met his gaze. He covered his surprise quickly and smirked. "Oatmeal for breakfast. How original."  
  
Trowa smirked back, his head tilting enough that Duo got a chance to see both eyes before the guy behind him complained the line wasn't moving. "Oatmeal can be exciting," Trowa murmured softly, just loud enough for Duo, and possibly the two guys directly beside him in line, to hear. Neither of the other two, however, seemed to notice anything odd in the way the words were spoken.  
  
His mind running through the possibilities, Duo took a seat all the way across the mess hall, his back to the wall and his eyes on Trowa. The brunet finished serving the line and then set the ladle carefully in the pot. He glanced once in Duo's direction, looked at the pot, and left. Quickly.  
  
With wide eyes, Duo made the connection and he stood up and made a hasty retreat to the exit. Someone called to him and asked what is hurry was, and he turned and grinned. "The oatmeal doesn't agree with me!" he yelled back, just as he pushed through the door. He made it halfway down the hall when the mess hall exploded, and the force of explosion behind him pushed him to his knees. He was pulled to his feet quickly and he looked up into green eyes. "Fancy meeting you here, handsome," he quipped, smirking.  
  
Trowa thrust a gun into his hands without a greeting and turned towards the far door. Duo shook his head and followed with a chuckle.  
  
"Come on, Tro. You were doing so good last time! Where's the romance?" Trowa thrust open the door and Duo followed, and they both stepped into the dark yard. Dawn was an hour away and was the darkest time of the night, the dark before the dawn. Despite the dark, however, Duo could still hear the sound of gunshots and shouts.   
  
They had made it only five or six yards from the barracks building before the lights in the yard came on, flooding the entire area with light... and bringing to view a dozen paint-splattered soldiers running across the yard away from a two-gun-toting Heero. Duo blinked in surprise, caught off guard more by the sight of Heero calmly walking after the guards as if fighting with paintball guns was normal.  
  
"Tro, you didn't," he said, voice awed. He raised his own gun closer and looked at it closely. He looked up, his eyes shining at Trowa. "You -did-."  
  
Green eyes started back at them, unreadable. Trowa's face was almost serious, but Duo could see the light twitching at the corner of his mouth, and then anything he could have said was interrupted by the arrival of more soldiers.  
  
For a split second, Duo was worried that these soldiers actually had real ammunition, but then a paint splatter blossomed in the dirt at his feet and he laughed loudly and raised his own gun. The first splat of paint hit the soldier in the middle and stained the front of his uniform black. The second took out either soldier on side of him, marking them in the same tarry color.  
  
While the soldiers stared at each other in surprise and confusion, Duo ran away, Trowa keeping an easy pace beside him, his own gun unused. They rounded a building and ducked against the wall. "Here," Trowa said softly, handing Duo an ammunition belt.  
  
"Oh, Trowa, this is the best present -ever-," Duo gushed, taking the belt and looping hit over his head and across his chest. Trowa said nothing, but the twitching of his lip became more obvious. Shouts alerted them to the approach of more soldiers and Duo reached up and placed his palm to Trowa's cheek for a moment. "Thanks, Trowa." Then Duo slipped away in the shadows along the building, leaving Trowa behind to deal with the soldiers who appeared around the corner of the building.  
  
*********  
  
Duo hadn't expected the mission to be overly difficult, but he hadn't expected it to be quite as easy as it turned out. With the confusion caused by the paintball guns and the paint-ammo, Duo, Heero, and Trowa managed to run around the base largely undetected, especially when the chaos started causing soldiers to fire randomly at each other. That instigated an all-out paintball war, and then the gundam pilots had only to get through random blasts of paint and find the control room.  
  
Finally, some ten minutes after dawn, Heero came on the comm link and informed the other two that he had found the control room and the main computer. That left Trowa and Duo to set the bombs in place, which they did separately, easily communicating where the other already was or had been. They ended up meeting in one of the barracks. Duo found Trowa already placing bombs around the structure supports at the other end and making his way towards Duo. The braided pilot sat down on the nearest bed and waited patiently for Trowa to reach him, his gun resting beside him on the bed as he leaned back on his arms.  
  
"You didn't get hit," Duo noted, looking at Trowa's impeccable uniform. The green-eyed boy made a soft sound as he reached up, arms stretched high above his head, to attach another bomb to another beam. Duo waited a few more minutes before speaking again. "We go in, we bo boom, they splat, we splat, we kick paintball ass... Thanks, Trowa," he said, smiling slightly. Outside, the paint war was dying down in spurts as Officers rounded up their paint-covered troops.  
  
Trowa finally reached the beam nearest Duo and then leaned against the support. He raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything, and they stared at each other until the door to the bunker opened.  
  
"Time," Heero said shortly. Duo calmly looked at the blue-eyed boy over his shoulder before standing up. He and Trowa both walked towards Heero, the taller trailing a foot behind and to the side. Heero's eyes slid from Duo to Trowa, his expression closed. "Finished?"  
  
"Mission accomplished," Trowa said.  
  
Duo snickered.   
  
"It's always the quiet ones," Heero muttered.   
  
Silently agreeing, Duo simply smirked and looked back at the various bombs Trowa had set. "Let's get out of here, guys. I've only got about three more minutes on the bombs I set." The three of them ran across the yard, avoiding groups of chastised soldiers and angry captains. The first bombs shook the ground, but the three kept running. Duo remembered watching the explosions over a rooftop lunch with Trowa, and he wished for a moment that they had the time to reenact that. Then he shook his head and called himself silly. Oatmeal bombs and paintball guns definitely won out over fireworks and a lunch... though- "Hey, Tro!" Duo called. Trowa was on the other side of the fence already, and Duo grinned down from the top. "What do you say to dinner and dancing next time?"  
  
Trowa paused, letting Heero get farther ahead of them. There was still so much chaos at the base, they could walk their gundams past the gate and no one would notice. "Dancing," repeated Trowa, tasting the word. Together, they started walking towards their gundams. As they reached the point where they would have to go in opposite directions, Trowa frowned and looked at Duo. "Dancing?"  
  
"Of course," Duo said, nodding. He smiled. "Come on, Trowa. A little music has to be easier than what you did today." He waved in the direction of the compound that was still rocking with explosions. He winked ad started to walk away, then turned back and returned long enough to hug Trowa. "I'm sure you'll think of something."  
  
"Anything else you'd like?" Trowa asked, lips curved in a definite smile. A smile, not a smirk, Duo thought wonderingly.  
  
Duo smiled and shook his head. "Just dancing." His stomach growled, reminding him of his missed breakfast. "And food. Don't forget the food." 


End file.
